Posts Tagged ‘community wind’

Community Wind: What’s a guy to do?

December 22nd, 2009

With wind farms popping up across the countryside, Midwesterners are becoming much more familiar with wind energy.  Yet few are aware of the type of wind development called “community wind.” That should change, however, thanks to a new publication called “Lessons & Concepts for Advancing Community Wind,” which was recently released by the Minnesota Project. 

 

What is Community Wind?

Without drawing much attention to it, I’ve talked about community wind before.  In a nutshell, community wind involves local ownership of wind turbines.  The electricity produced by the turbines is usually sold to area utilities. 

This model flies in the face of traditional wind farms, where a company builds and operates large wind farms.  Because wind energy is the focus of their business, these companies develop both the expertise and economy of scale that drives down the cost of production. 

But the downside to the traditional model is that it is dependent on the development of new transmission lines and causes a greater share of the financial impact from the turbines to bypass the local economy. 

 

Why aren’t there more community wind projects?

A simple answer to the question is that people who try to develop their own wind projects don’t know how to overcome the barriers that pop up in the development process.  “Lessons & Concepts for Advancing Community Wind” attempts to address these issues by providing case studies of three community wind projects:  City of Willmar, MN; Winona County MN; and Miner County, SD.  These three projects were selected for review because each took a very different path to completion.    

I’ve written about both the Miner County and Winona County projects before (see here and here).  The “Lessons & Concepts” guide, however, digs in much deeper.  It would have been nice to have had this guide back in 2001 when we developed the Miner County Wind Project.   

And that’s the value of the guide.  It’s intended to help people with little background in the energy industry build their capacity and understanding. 

We’ve fielded a lot of calls at the Rural Learning Center through the years from people asking how we developed the Miner County Wind Project. We’re always happy to help. But time is so short that we often hang up having only scratched the surface on the subject.  

That’s why the next time I receive such a call, I’m going to recommend the caller read “Lessons & Concepts for Advancing Community Wind” first.  I’m confident doing so will make our conversation more productive. 

Update:  David Tidball from Windustry offers some great advice in the comment section to this post.  For instance, he pointed out the “Communit Wind Toolbox” that Windustry has developed, as well as other great information on community wind (found here).  Thanks David.

Other resources

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Economic Development, Rural, Training and Events | Comments (4)

Winona invests in wind

September 21st, 2009

News comes to us from Minnesota announcing a partnership enabling Winona County to become “the first county in Minnesota to develop renewable energy to benefit taxpayers.” (see “County finalizes wind turbine project,” Winona Daily News)

This sounds very similar to what the City of Howard accomplished back in 2001 when it became the first municipality in the state to own and operate wind turbines. (The two other communities in Miner County–Carthage and Canova–followed suit in 2002.)

Although similar in many ways, the two projects appear to differ in their desired outcome.  Howard’s motivation revolved around assisting a start-up wind energy company and developing a stronger community brand. Winona’s goals, on the other hand, appear to be to provide a model for wind energy development and develop a revenue source for economic development efforts.  (According to the article, the Winona County Economic Development Authority could receive up to $1.12 million from the sale of electricity over the next 20 years.)

The ability of the wind project to deliver over a million dollars in revenue to the Winona Count EDA will only be proven by time.  But I think the community leaders should be congratulated for looking at the wind development as a source of revenue for economic development.

 

Why investments like this are important

It has been the experience of the Rural Learning Center that most rural communities know they need to invest in economic development, but few have or want to use tax dollars to invest in those efforts.  If not tax dollars, then what?

Admittedly Winona’s investment doesn’t come without risks, and questioning public investment in private sector business is a legitimate concern.  But there’s little doubt that the Winona model points the way to one option for funding community development activities.

It also raises the question:  What is your community doing to fund economic and community development for your community? 

Note: Thanks go to Dakota Rural Action for tweeting about this project. (and who says Tweeting is a waste of time?)  And thanks to Linda Grover, Director of the Winona County Economic Development Authority, for answer a few questions.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Economic Development, In the News, Rural | Comments (0)

Small Wind: The next community development opportunity?

October 28th, 2008

Small wind is a term used to define wind turbines of under 100 kilowatts.  As wind developers push the size of utility scale wind turbines to 1.5 megawatts and larger, many people are also turning to small wind as an option for homes and small businesses.  This is especially true in off-grid applications. 

Inspired by the economic and social conditions in Haiti, Shayne Frayne developed a “miniature” wind generator based on a revolutionary “turbine-less” design.  Although difficult for most of us to imagine, Frayne does a nice job of explaining his Windbelt technology in the video below:

 

Small Wind & Mental Models

In a post yesterday, Joe described how our “mental models” can blind us from recognizing new ideas and opportunities.  Frayne obviously overcame that problem in developing the vision for his wind generator.  

In a similar fashion, leaders in Miner County, South Dakota developed a vision for how wind energy could help transform their struggling economy.  Beginning in 2001, the community set out to accomplish that vision by:

With over 200 new green jobs created since 2001 in the county of 2,800, that vision is paying dividends.

So, why didn’t more communities recognize this opportunity?  Part of the answer can undoubtedly be attributed to the mental models created by cheap energy and decades of decline in rural communities. 

Today, many communities see the opportunity and are rushing to see if they can become a home to a wind turbine farm or a wind energy business.  With growing job and financial opportunities, it’s a great opportunity to pursue.  

At the same time, I hope those of us in rural communities pause long enough to examine the mental models that cause us to covet this kind of development.  Perhaps our rush to get into the wind energy game has blinded us to other opportunities like those of the WindBelt.  And we can’t afford to miss any opportunities just because we’re in too big of a hurry to pause and think. 

See the following for further information:

 

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Community Development, Economic Development, Leadership, Rural | Comments (0)